


The Noise that Colours Make

by Thesherlockholmes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Childhood Memories, Drug Use, Gen, Internal Monologue, Music, Poetry, Suicidal Thoughts, Uni aged Sherlock, drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29127027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thesherlockholmes/pseuds/Thesherlockholmes
Summary: Blood-muscles ache, calloused fingers rub the wood floor, back pressing down—shoulders, middle back, tailbone. Bones sharp, vertebrae bruising as he attempts movement. He counts the seconds, the numbers come to him in perse, cerise, amaranthine. Greek bleeds in, his brother's voice teaching him from a tattered book at high-summer noon, days yellowed with sun and daffodils.Sherlock's world has become washed in sound, it's too much for him to take.
Kudos: 4





	The Noise that Colours Make

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WatsonIsTheBeesKnees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatsonIsTheBeesKnees/gifts).



_“It was the year he began to wonder about the noise that colors make. Roses came roaring across the garden at him. He lay on his bed at night listening to the silver light of stars crashing against the window screen.”_

– Anne Carson, from Autobiography of Red

-

It is two years after he leaves university when the notes that have played in the back of his head for years come to the forefront. They come in silence as a great tidal wave that crashes over sense, that obscures any cobbled sense of normal, that washes his mind until it stings with salt.

His hair soon smells of sea.

The violin mocks from the corner, propped up in the lilac half-light, out of the case. Rose wood against the oak floor, near rotted with age, the instrument a shadow against the grey white-washed walls. The air stinks of decay—he can no longer discern if the scent comes from inside him, or outside. He cannot pick up the instrument. He’s misplaced the bow and the sounds that came from plucking were all wrong—tinny and out of tune. That is impossible for the strings are always tuned precisely—the awful sound, then, originates in his head, his ears stuffed so full of the world that he can no longer make out his solace. In truth, the entire enterprise of playing is now useless.

His heart beats heavy and rapid. The needle glints silver in the moonlight that is pouring waves of Chopin through the window. Mariage d’amour.

Overlaying, is the piercing techno-sound of a song picked up from the sound system in the tube two days ago. The chorus has been playing on repeat since then, casting any beauty of nature into Nihilistic sound. There is no reason to continue living.

The dose was purposefully too much. The paper with the list written neatly in pencil that scratched out the sounds of Willems folded into an origami crane on the chair, words concealed in its wings.

_Swans are floating by…_

Yes, the remembered sound of a dying man—well, one song makes sense. Outside the corridors of his mind, the laugh echoes. It sounds half-mad. The human sound is followed by Voi Che Sapete. There is no escape from his thoughts.

The shadows on the ceiling change. He watches as they turn grey, then greyer, and finally to indistinguishable black—mourning sounds: long, low notes of a cello. He waits for death.

Dreams are filled with colour—in them he is deaf. People talk, their mouths moving, hands moving, eyes bright and some crazed; he shakes his head, tries sign language, and then offers Braille. The people around him just keep moving their mouths, until they shake their heads and walk away. He is deemed a lost cause. He is lost in this world he cannot interpret, in this world that does not speak to him, that does not understand.

He wakes, eyes blinking open to sunlight and bird-song, dawning Tchaikovsky. He does not move, stays staring at the gold flecked ceiling—the sound evidence of life—for hours. Blood-muscles ache, calloused fingers rub the wood floor, back pressing down—shoulders, middle back, tailbone. Bones sharp, vertebrae bruising as he attempts movement. He counts the seconds, the numbers come to him in perse, cerise, amaranthine. Greek bleeds in, his brother's voice teaching him from a tattered book at high-summer noon, days yellowed with sun and daffodils.

Old memories of valley grass, willow trees, red dog fur, breakfast tea, Mycroft singing hymns in Latin, race through his thoughts and play out on the rain-ruined ceiling. Forgotten child-soft laughter, women’s powdery skirts, the tense talk of businessmen, politicians ready for the coming revolution in France, “My boy, you’ll learn the French are always having a revolution.” It had been the voice of his brother’s tutor; confusing words heard with his head pressed to the door, green eyes squeezed shut in concentration. They were always speaking in French.

Images, each one running out the last: Sunday church, dog-death, borrowed prayer books, and stolen prayers. He knew not who he was speaking to, after all, but surely the writer’s did, surely these prayers would bring him back—the book burning when months passed and his dog was not resurrected by the good Lord.

The choir hushedly singing the Song for Athene. Gently, he pushes the voices away.

The rough rod of school masters, the rougher hands of school mates. Bruised eyes turning black, sea-green, mauve—he could paint it for you, if you asked: he has it memorised after so many occurrences. He could draw the infirmary for you, too. He was prone to broken bones—the pain stopped the thoughts for a little while. It was only after he broke his wrist that he stopped the orchestrated falls, not playing his violin for so long was a torture too great to risk again.

On a wheel, yes, the great and grand invention of modern man, rolling through dirt, to cobbles, to pavement—stream of thought finding a pair of hands pressing into the wood floor, peeling the back away from it to sit up. Refocused eyes. A first look around the barren room.

It yields no music.

The swan has not flown away, he finds, when he turns his head. And beside the violin is a bow.


End file.
